It might be said in some quarters that Rude Awakening is a throwback to the eighties, a band with scant relevance to today which should be allowed to gracefully fade away. But the band's five members aren't subscribers to such negative thinking; they truly believe in their band and their music - in fact more so now than ever - and moreover they know that there is an audience for their music, whatever the arbiters of taste may prefer to believe.

"Put our CDs in a record store and they will sell",
points out bassist Robert Ryder; he and his band mates have a
long and successful track record for marketing self-funded releases,
five of them having preceded the band's just-released debut for
Nidus. But as well as sheer persistence, this release also pays
tribute to the band's open-mindedness, for it is the first fruit
of a new relationship with producer Lee Popa (White Zombie, Ministry)
which has brought significant changes in the band's music.

The band
was actually formed in Virginia in 1984, part of the same scene
which yielded Gwar and a number of alternative success stories.
Rude Awakening has always aimed to keep moving forward but in
the early years there were miscues too, like an abortive move
to New York. and then the loss of Ryder's founding partner, drummer
Joey Ballard, when his girlfriend objected to the 1988 relocation
to Los Angeles.

Ryder never
gave up, and the band's profile continued to rise along with music
which continued to develop. To this day he believes that this
slow, steady progress is what has kept the band together. "There's
always been a continual flow of new material which consistently
pleases us. Each of us is good at coming up with things the rest
of us are impressed with, and as long as we keep on coming to
rehearsals with smiles on our faces, knowing that we're going
to enjoy the next four hours, this band will always continue."
Eventually Ballard returned to the fold, choosing band over girlfriend,
and a solid line-up was soon locked into place; indeed the current
players had already recorded two successful albums together before
Lee Popa came into the picture.

Rude Awakening
wasn't the first band to attract Popa's attention, but it was
the first to truly heed his words. The band's affection for classic
metal in the vein of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath is not something
they would ever want to disavow, but equally the band's insistence
on continuing to progress meant that when Popa told them their
sound needed updating, they were ready to listen.

"It's
hard for a band to be objective about its music", notes Ryder,
"but we understood his reasoning, and none of us had a vision
as clear as his about what needed to be done to keep Rude Awakening
relevant"

"We've
always been able to have something happening with the band,
one thing or another which will keep our motivation up, and now
here was a producer with a strong track record who wanted to make
some changes. So it wasn't really a huge departure, just another
stage in the progression of the band."

"He's
given us a new viewpoint on song structure, stripping everything
away to the point where you can clearly see what the essentials
are. We had fallen in the L.A. trap, tending to get too elaborate
because we were worrying about impressing all the other musicians
who come to shows, when we should have been worrying about reaching
out to our core audience."

As a result
of Popa's work with the band, Rude Awakening now represents a
juxtaposition of old and new. The songwriting (to which all five
members contribute) has been refined and honed under the producers
tutelage, and modern musical elements have been drafted in to
eliminate any traces of predictability. The result is a refreshing
new approach to a form of music nearly as old as - but nowhere
near as respected as - rock and roll itself. The band is modest
enough not to make bold claims of innovation, but the fact is
that their chosen policy of always moving forward, even if only
taking small steps, has brought them to a point where they really
are attempting something new; twelve years in the making, their
new album may not represent a fresh new band, but it certainly
marks a fresh new approach. And, they hasten to point out, this
is only the first phase of an ongoing transformation...